Category 10: E-mail, Media and Contact

The "vegas" top-level domain was created a few years ago and we now use the domain divalas.vegas (no "www.", no ".com" just "divalas.vegas") as our primary Internet domain.

The phase-in process to the divalas.vegas domain is mostly complete as of this writing although there are some functions (such as the Forum) that may still be on the previously-used domains.

Most previously-used email addresses and web URLs will continue to work as expected for the foreseeable future.

Most "Deep links" to such things as photos, documents, etc. on our web site should continue to work indefinitely.

If you have any difficulty using the new divalas.vegas domain, please email tech@divalas.vegas and we will assist you.

Almost all e-mail of any type should be sent to: dlv@divalas.vegas

The direct e-mail addresses to the following may be used:

dlvorg@divalas.vegas	To send e-mail to the DLV Organizers Group (DLVORG)
dlvdisc@divalas.vegas	For submissions to the DLV Discussion Forum
bigsister@divalas.vegas	E-mail pertaining to the Big Sister Program.
tech@divalas.vegas	Technical issues, e-mail issues, web site errors, etc.
abuse@divalas.vegas	Spam complaints, etc.

dlv@divalas.vegas may always be used if you're unsure on the exact address to which DLV e-mail is to be sent.

Just send a brief e-mail to dlv@divalas.vegas and state that you wish to join the mailing list. It will help if you include the word "Subscribe" in the subject of your message.

You can be assured that if you aren't interested in DLV or no longer interested in DLV, we don't want to bother you and fill up your inbox with unwanted mail.

A brief e-mail message with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject will usually get you removed from all of our mailing lists.

What is usually happening in that case is that the e-mail address you're sending your unsubscribe from does not match any address which we have on file. All of our recent mailings contain the line "This was addressed to:" and the e-mail address to which it was sent toward the bottom of the mailing. Please be sure you include this line if your current e-mail address is not the same as the address we are using to send you our mailings.

Should you ever send e-mail to DLV which is returned as undeliverable, please forward the returned message(es) with all headers and "gobbledygook" intact to:

dlvemergency@yahoo.com

This "backup" e-mail account is not checked nearly as frequently as the main DLV account, so unless you have difficulty, please use the main DLV e-mail address:

dlv@divalas.vegas

... for sending e-mail to DLV.

E-mail addressed to the main DLV address is forwarded to our Corresponding Secretary, Project Manager, and Systems Administrator.

The Corresponding Secretary is responsible for handling most routine correspondence.

The Project Manager will handle any e-mail regarding the organization of the next upcoming DLV event.

The Systems Administrator will handle any e-mail of a technical nature.

Please be assured that we intend to respond to all e-mail which requires a response in a timely manner.

We do not routinely respond to commercial or promotional items which have no direct relevance to our event.

The first thing you should do if you are awaiting a response is to resend or send a reminder. E-mail is not a perfect medium and humans make mistakes.

Here are a few helpful hints to assure that you're able to send and receive e-mail to and from us without difficulty:

• Please be sure your e-mail does not appear "spammy" so it will not be classified as spam by our spam filters. Be sure your e-mail is text only and does not contain images or URLs.

• If you have been sending any kind of automated announcements (site invites, news items, promotional items, etc.) to DLV, please turn these off, wait a couple of weeks, and resend your relevant items. Those who frequently send such items to DLV addresses are added to a transient "junk e-mail senders" list.

• Please send your e-mail to DLV from an e-mail account which is "in the clear" for replies as such things as challenge-response and click-to-activate e-mail systems have been particularly troublesome for us.

• Likewise, with rare exception, the response to you will come from one of our volunteer's personal e-mail account. If you routinely block e-mail from unknown senders, you may not be able to receive our replies.

If, after several tries and a realistic time to wait for a response, you still have difficulty, send a brief e-mail to tech@divalas.vegas and explain the circumstances. Please detail when you sent your e-mail, the exact e-mail address to which you sent it, and a summary of your item.

If your item is not relevant to our event it will not be forwarded or published.

"Forward Me" items, regardless of how urgent, important, cute, or heartwarming they may appear to be, will be ignored.

Our media are not intended for general announcements or TG community news.

No, sorry.

Those were for use only during the event. Please do not use those numbers once the event has concluded. Your cooperation is appreciated.

We ask that you please do not phone any DLV organizers or volunteers directly unless you have been given explicit first-person permission to do so! Please respect the privacy of our volunteers.

No, we do not.

First, be sure you're using a correct and current URL. If you're following a link on the web or from an old e-mail, you may be following an outdated URL. The main DLV page is on the web at: https://divalas.vegas and there are links from that main page to all current DLV pages.

If you're sure you are using a correct URL, wait a while and try again. Most internet disruptions are temporary and resolve themself in time.

If you're certain that the problem is on our end, please report it to: tech@divalas.vegas

You are not using the complete and correct URL. Click here: https://divalas.vegas

We don't do banners, sorry.

If you run a site which is of significant interest to our attendees, we will consider listing you, depending on the circumstances. We will not post a link to any sexually-oriented or "dating" site.

If you run a business which has a physical storefront, open to the public during normal business hours, in the Las Vegas vicinity and wish to invite our attendees and web visitors, we would be happy to list you on our Big List of vendors.

If you would like to link to us, please feel free to do so with one reservation. If your web site is sexually oriented, we ask that you please refrain from linking to us. Your understanding is appreciated.

We've seen cases where our mailings are improperly classified as spam by some spam filters, and rejected or filed in a junk mail folder. Our mailings will have unsubscribe instructions, which will have similar verbiage to the so-called removal instructions contained in many spam messages, and this will trigger some spam filters.

Each mailing we make typically results in a number of failures for reasons such as "mailbox full", "over quota", etc.

If you're not receiving our mailings, check your mail configuration to be sure you're not rejecting our mail or classifying it as spam, and that you are keeping your mailbox within your size quota.

If after repeated attempts to join the list with no mail reception, please consider trying the following:

• Temporarily turn off all e-mail filtering that will reject mail, and watch spam and junk mail folders to be sure you are not classifying our mail as spam.

• Take out an additional mail account with a provider such as Yahoo or Hotmail and subscribe to the list using that account.

If it's been a while since you've tried to join, or since you received anything, you may have to re-join the list since we regularly purge our list of undeliverable addresses.

You will normally stay on our mailing list from year to year unless one of the following things happens:

1. You request removal from our mailing list. Any kind of "Spam complaint" coming to us from you or your ISP's abuse department is considered a removal request.

2. Mail to you is returned as undeliverable.

If your e-mail address changes, please send in a change of address request. Please be sure to keep enough space in your inbox to receive our mailings. If you were dropped due to undeliverable mail, you may have to join our list again.

The Diva Las Vegas "emergency" e-mail address (dlvemergency@yahoo.com) should only be used in the case of e-mail outages involving our main e-mail system.

This e-mail account is only checked during known or suspected e-mail outages.

Please do not CC: this address "just in case".

The normal e-mail address (dlv@divalas.vegas) should always be used except in the event of e-mail outages involving our main e-mail system.

Unfortunately, e-mail sender address falsification is easy to do and is very common among spammers. It is highly unlikely that the spam you received actually originated from or transited through any of our e-mail systems.

If you sincerely believe that any spam e-mail actually came from our e-mail system, please forward the offending message(s) with the complete header lines intact to: abuse@divalas.vegas

We have volunteers who are active in the anti-spam community and we will check your report thoroughly.

To better tell what did and did not actually originate from our e-mail systems, our legitimate e-mail will almost never contain any file attachments or any embedded graphics. If it appeared to come from DLV and has a file attached to it, it's most likely something very nasty which was sent to you without our approval.

Things such as brochures and flyers are occasionally produced, depending on the anticipated importance of attracting new attendees to the next annual event.

DLV brochures are now available either in reasonable quantities in hardcopy form or in the form of .pdf files which can be duplicated conveniently. Please ask if you would like to distribute DLV brochures.

What is most likely happening is that you inadvertently "agreed" to let the site in question access your local address book or contact list and send automated invites to those on your list.

Some sites are very clever and downright sneaky in getting you to "agree" to do this, often by providing a pre-checked and deceptively-worded "invite my friends" checkbox which is on a page with considerable other distracting text.

These can be stopped by adjusting your profile on the site in question to disallow the sending of automated invites to those in your contact lists.

Various sanity checks and abuse traps are used to prevent such things as comment spam, fraudulent ratings, machine-generated ratings and comments, etc. This may result in errors messages such as:

• Corrupt argument ...
• Phase error ...
• Insufficient arguments ...
• Improper argument type
• Disallowed vendor for this ip

Should errors persist, please report the circumstances to tech@divalas.vegas giving date/time of the error and the type of browser you are using.

Most of these errors can be prevented by observing the following:

1. Use a standard web browser, correctly installed and configured.

2. Don't enter ratings or comments via an anonymous proxy or with a plug-in which disables the HTTP_REFERER. (If you don't know what these are, it probably does not apply to you.)

3. Don't use a computer system on the premises of a listed vendor to enter ratings and comments about that vendor or any competitors.

4. Click SUBMIT only once. If you click more than once "just to be sure", you may very well elicit one of the above error messages.

If you continue to have difficulty entering ratings and comments, please write to tech@divalas.vegas and explain the circumstances. If necessary, we will enter the ratings and comments for you manually.

It is now pitch dark! If you proceed you will likely fall into a pit!

Please report it to tech@divalas.vegas

Please include the complete URL you're referring to as well as details on what does not work as expected.

No!

Next question, please ...

There's really no "one size fits all" solution to these related issues.

The best course of action is to report it to tech@divalas.vegas and please explain the exact error message that you're getting. Screen shots will help greatly.

Some web content filtering services do regard our site as "adult" in nature and some firms do indeed block such content. Contact tech@divalas.vegas for possible work-arounds.

For our on-line forum, we do subscribe to several lists of known forum spammers and we block access from the networks known to be friendly to spammers. Again, contact tech@divalas.vegas to get the network you're coming from temporarily or permanently removed from the block lists.

Everyone who has registered for an upcoming DLV event or has attended DLV in recent years now has their own Attendee Information Portal screen on the web.

This is a single screen which replaces multiple screens used in the past, which allows convenient access to several important functions, including:

• Registration for the next upcoming event.
• Cancel/update of an existing registration.
• Activity sign-up for the upcoming event.
• Review and change activity sign-ups.
• Final Attendee Information (previously called Large Final Mailing)

Next category: 11 Volunteers

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